Travel brochure production

Headwater is a long-established active holiday company, known for carefully curated walking, cycling and cultural tours.

Headwater’s brochures were already established with a loyal audience who had entrusted their holiday plans to the company for many years. Our brief was to help them attract a new, younger audience, without undermining what long-standing customers recognised and relied on.

This project centred on Headwater’s flagship highlights brochure, produced as a single publication with a cultural tours section presented in reverse. The publication needed to remain clearly Headwater in tone and structure, while accommodating this shift in emphasis.

The brochure design needed to serve two audiences at once, which placed demands on structure, content and presentation across the publication.

With client-side writers supplying continually developing content as itineraries were refined, we would have to coordinate this carefully across the production process.

Itineraries varied significantly in length and format, with some pages needing to handle several tours and others focusing on a single experience. Each spread needed to accommodate the different types of trip available and present practical information clearly, without disrupting the overall rhythm of the publication.

The project also operated within a fixed print schedule, with no room for any delays, placing a strong emphasis on careful planning and tight version control.

Our role was to provide experienced, dependable production support within Headwater’s already established brand framework. We worked flexibly around our client’s preferred way of working, managing content as it arrived and adapting layouts as required while maintaining consistency across the brochure.

We applied a graphic system consistently across both sections of the brochure and introduced a new photography style to appeal to the broader audience our client wanted to attract.

Close coordination with the printing house was a critical part of the process: we managed detailed technical specifications, oversaw file preparation and ensured all artwork was fully press-ready. As well as the printed brochures, we also produced downloadable PDFs to the same standard, all delivered in line with the strict production schedule.

The result was a controlled, reliable travel brochure production process that supported Headwater at a key point in their calendar, serving its long-standing audience while helping the brochure attract a younger audience.